for the glorious

1. If you have a peculiar problem don’t go to a psychiatrist.

After Jacob’s grandfather had passed, he saw a creature in the woods which he believes killed his beloved grandfather. Nobody believed him, they thought he was crazy. Well if you saw this…

you’d probably think you were crazy too. Jacob went to this so called psychiatrist and was diagnosed with acute stress disorder, but his mother didn’t find anything cute about it.

Just me ?

In 1908 a group of rogue peculiars, led by Caul Bentham Peregrine, entered an old, unused loop in the Siberian wastes in the hope of becoming immortal so that they might truly cheat death, rather than just delay it. However, their experiment failed, destroying a large area of land and the group were presumed dead. It was soon discovered that the rogue peculiars had not died but had become something else entirely, they became known as Hollowgasts.

“It was some time before we realized that these tentacle-mawed abominations were in fact our wayward brothers, crawled from the smoking crater left behind by their experiment. Rather than becoming gods, they had transformed themselves into devils.” – Miss Peregrine (pages 259-260)

A wight is the evolved form of a hollowgast after it has consumed enough peculiar souls. They work for the hollowgasts, aiding in their transformation into wights by hunting down peculiars for them to feed on. Like hollowgasts, most Wights do not retain their memories of their lives prior to the incident which turned them into hollowgasts in the first place. A wight looks exactly like a human, except the fact that they have pure, milky-white eyes with no iris or pupil. They can impersonate almost anybody, which is in part due to their natural voices lacking accents or distinctive inflections, which allows them to affect a great variety of accents with ease. Wights will often take jobs in the normal world, wearing colored contact lenses so that their unusual eyes do not cause suspicion. In this way, a wight may watch over and become many different people in a peculiar’s life, like Dr. Golan, Jacob’s so-called psychiatrist.

2. Death leads you to greater things.

Even though beloved Grandpa Portman had passed…

Jacob moved on. He found the origin story of his grandfather and even visited an island with a peculiar house filled with peculiar children. He found out that everything his grandfather had told him about was true. Jacob is a peculiar with powers… death really can open your eyes. He went on an adventure with his father in Wales, who isn’t a peculiar. Just don’t get discouraged because one man’s loss is another man’s treasure.

3. Peregrine falcons are just bird ladies in disguise.

After his first visit to the peculiar house, Jacob wasn’t very fond of it. It was very dirty and empty. He left feeling very disappointed.

“I left the house feeling like I was further than ever from the truth.” – Jacob Portman (page 85)

This boy couldn’t believe that his grandfather’s stories weren’t real, or at least weren’t in his reality. Jacob couldn’t understand how his grandfather’s ‘made up’ house was empty and destroyed. One day he was in his hotel room with his father. Jacob was at his lowest point because he had believed that he came to Wales for no reason. After Jacob woke from a restless sleep, he found a falcon on his dresser. Obviously he did something that any person would do…

After his glorious scream and call for his dad, the bird flew away but left behind a feather. His father picked it up and uttered words which gave Jacob hope.

“A peregrine falcon.” – Jacob’s dad (page 103)

The name which has been thrown around by his grandfather so many times (and it’s in the title of the book… duh), Peregrine. Jacob made the connection in his wonderful brain and figured out that Miss Peregrine was a peregrine falcon. More importantly she was a ymbryne. A ymbryne (pronounced im-brin) is a female peculiar who can manipulate time and can take the form of a bird. Ymbrynes take care of peculiars to hide them from the world’s dangers by creating stable time loops that can only be accessed by other peculiars to provide temporal isolation from the rest of the world. Next time you see a peregrine falcon, she could actually be a ymbryne working her magic.

4. Don’t go through caves.

After Jacob saw the falcon, he realized that going back to the house was the only option. Obviously he found nothing, again *gasp* he started looking through the stuff which was left behind and found a huge chest which was heavy and locked. His genius plan was to drop the chest from the balcony onto the ground, instead it crashed into the basement. Finding the nerve to go there, he found that inside of the chest were a bunch of old pictures. Then he heard noises, footsteps upstairs. He called out and they called back, they were looking for Abe, his grandfather. When Jacob made his way upstairs, he found them, the peculiars. They were scared of Jacob and thought that he was a wight. Some disappeared, some flew away, some transformed into something else, but most of them just ran away. Jacob spotted one girl in particular, Emma, who he decided to follow. She led him through a cave.

So it wasn’t exactly like that, but one can dream right ?

Anyway… going through this cave put Jacob into a loop. A loop is an occurrence which only a ymbryne can create where a past date (such as September 3, 1940) exists and repeats over and over, though the experience of it by those who are peculiar differentiates. Like the date changes with midnight, Miss Peregrine’s loop is reset with the changeover. Once the changeover occurs, the loop is reset. Next time you decide to go through a cave, keep in mind, it might set off a loop, and you might discover that you could be a peculiar.

5. When in Wales, don’t kill sheep.

According to Jacob’s father, the Welsh take their sheep very seriously. After his second trip into the loop, he came back home to his father and his father told him that there was a murder.

Sadly though, no real person died. It was just a sheep.

“Forget dinner. Come with me.”

My father never skipped dinner. Something was most definitely amiss.

“What’s going on? … What’s happening? Did someone die, or what?”

“No, no, no,” he said. “Well, sort of. Some sheep.”

“What’s that got to do with us?”

“They think it was kids who did it. Like a vandalism thing.”

“They who? The sheep police?”

“The farmers,” he said. “They’ve interrogated everyone under the age of twenty. Naturally, they’re pretty interested in where you’ve been all day.” (page 201)

These people are treating this situation like an episode of How To Get Away With Murder just without Viola Davis and with a farmer named Pitchfork.

6. If you meet a guy you like, don’t compare him to his grandfather.

Emma Bloom was a peculiar who was in a relationship with Abe, Jacob’s grandfather. When Jacob first met Emma, she thought that he was a wight because she knew that Abe wasn’t stuck in the loop. In fact when she found out that he was Abe’s grandson she straight away compared him to his grandfather. At first Jacob stayed away because he felt that she wanted him as a reminder of his grandfather, and Jacob felt that they were different and he couldn’t fulfill those needs for Emma. She, however, made peace with the death of Abe and was sure of herself with Jacob. So I guess maybe you should since Jacob did end up with Emma…

7. There are children out there with powers.

If a little girl named Emma could make fire dance on her tiny hands, then anyone of us could have peculiar powers.